Amitte

Progress report: Fourth week (+ last days) of June ‘20

Get it? Last Day of June? The game that’s still in my backlog? Aaanyway, that was weak; let’s move on.

Pretty much everything these days was fine and dandy… until yesterday. I tried eating a melon, like I would usually do when there is one at home… and suddenly, my mouth started burning. For context, I haven’t eaten anything else for a while before eating. Also, I’ve eaten only somewhat spicy things (not too good with that stuff) in my life before - like jalapeno peppers or… well, soups with too much pepper (that’s how sensitive I am)… and I recognized fairly quickly that this was much worse. So I tried seeing if anyone online ever had this kind of problem and I was lead to believe that it’s a minor oral allergy, which “shouldn’t go beyond an annoyance”. With my mouth still burning, I tried mixing the rest of the melon with milk and honey, which are known to ease burning in the mouth, and leaving it overnight to bite. However, I’m really not convinced by what that site said, since the stinging ended up lasting until I went to sleep (so for about 4 hours) and now that I woke up, I still feel numb where I got burned. This is all super weird, because until now, I’ve been convinced that I was never allergic to any of the things I know (save for a minor allergy during childhood) and I’ve especially liked eating melon, because of how soft it is and tastes. If any of you fellow assasins were interested enough to read the paragraph, I’d love your input on this (preferably if you’re not as confused as I am).

Either way, this week’s assassinations are down here:

Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden - You could have called this game “BioShock: The Hidden Object Adventure” and no one would have argued with you. …maybe except 2K, I think they would have liked their sales cut. I feel kinda lied to by the promotional art; while the protagonist does seem to look kinda like that, her function is different than her dress code suggests, if that makes any sense? Also, she’s voiced by the same woman AM seems to not let out of their voice booth; some original protagonist that is. Anyway, yeah, as much as I feel like I missed out on a lot of plot while playing BioShock, I strongly feel that Abyss parroted its themes. The minigames in this one were either stupid easy or really dang hard, in my opinion. It all required a second playthrough for achievements’ sake, but luckily, this one is a standalone, so there’s nothing more to see later. Done and dusted.

Answer Knot - Follow suggestions simulator, basically. The initial premise made it seem much more interesting than the plot twist ended up being. I’m not really a fan of aliens, after all.

Captain Firebeard and the Bay of Crows - I really am glad the monthly theme got me to complete this game, ‘cause otherwise I don’t think I’d touch it so soon, if ever. Captain Firebeard’s story is set in the 1700s and tells the story of an adventure the titular character and his crew set out on after learning about the Bay of Crows. The VN was made in my arch-nemesis of the dinosaur variety… but I have to say, it doesn’t look half as bad as most VNs running on the same script do. The writing of the whole thing is also much more better than True Lover’s Knot, which is another VN from this studio that I’ve had the (dis?)pleasure of reading. The director notes in his commentary (found in the DLC) that he took care to be as historically accurate as possible after the studio was called out on the inaccuracies found in another VN of theirs (yikes?), so I also have to give credit for that, although without personal comment, since I don’t know anything about pirates or sailing boats. Still, there are downsides. I believe the devs are, by now, well-known for including minigames in each of their games, and this one was no exception. The minigame present here was much less enjoyable than the one found in True Lover’s Knot (which seems to be one they default to more often) and for some reason its audio only worked in one ear, but at least the achievements related to it were lenient (and didn’t bug for me, thankfully, as I’ve seen reviews mentioning that possibility). Speaking of the audio… the voice acting is really “meh”. I have heard worse, buuut… Captain Firebeard is the most important character in the story and he looks like he’s well over 40 years old at least, so why does he sound like a twenty-something shouting and rolling the R in his room? The non-English characters are going in and out of their accents, the first mate gets the emotions wrong at times and it really irks me how they didn’t seem to know the right way to pronounce certain words or which word to put an accent on. Thankfully, there is one importantly British character and her voice is perfect, no audio or acting issues. All in all the game wasn’t a bad time, but I found myself thinking “please end now”… right before it ended on a big cliffhanger. It has been almost three years since the game was released though, so I’m pretty sure there was never actually a plan to continue the story; maybe except for the spin-off DLC, which I also happen to own, but discovered that it doesn’t work because someone at Sapphire Dragon Productions seems to have forgotten to include the executable with the actual game in the files. Here goes another yikes.

Self-Reliance - This one really caught my attention when I first found it. An FMV? Made in China? Focused on sexual education? And it’s free?! I originally thought of playing it for my Free Games Week, but had to give it up, as the videos wouldn’t play on the PC I normally use. Now that I finally got to it, however… I really can’t decide how I feel about it. On one hand, the atmosphere is campy at times and all the actors look like they could make good friends; on the other hand, the translation is almost nonexistent (three of five chapters are as raw as can be; so much so that the choices have been left blank) and where it does exist, it’s begging to be edited to look presentable, aaand then there’s one elusive achievement that has only been figured out and unlocked by the lucky 0.4% of people. If a translation update gets released, I’ll be interested, but I’m not counting on it. So far, I’m marking this one as “beaten” and extending a congratulations to all the people who made the game possible; I wish my school projects had been half as cool as this.

Tasty Shame in Silver Soul! - Honestly? I don’t get what this game is supposed to be at all. I mean, I get that it’s a piss-poor attempt at a VN-style story dominated by an ultra-obvious Candy Crush copycat, but other than that? It’s just bad. So bad that it was removed from the store quite a while ago. As for the specifics: the matching game wasn’t terribly hard, the short story scenes were easily forgettable and the language was terrible. (There is an individual being credited for translating the game from Russian to English, but I’d like to stop and ask one thing: have you ever seen a translation so bad that the game thanks you, the player, for being made? As if you were actually the developer? Because that is exactly what Tasty Shame in Silver Soul! does in its credit roll.) The only reason I didn’t finish it when I first played it is that the way it presented itself before the last choice made me think I would have to replay the whole game multiple times to get all the endings… which didn’t turn out to actually be the case. Oh well, at least now it’s finally done.

The Waters Above: Prelude - I have to say, if it wasn’t for my last minute monthly theme title swap, I probably would have never gotten to reading this. Boy, would I have missed out! The Waters Above: Prelude, as its store page states, is a story about sea nymphs who take care of stars. It’s made up of four vignettes, each of them introducing the characters and establishing their relationships. Even after reading all of them, the concept appears bizarre to me; I can’t tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. Sadly, I will never get an answer, as the full project has been cancelled a few months ago (and I originally kept myself from reading this in wait for the main game’s release). If I were to judge what is released, however, I’d have to say the VN is wonderful on all fronts. The background and character art are simply pretty, the UI artwork (which often doesn’t get enough attention) is absolutely one of the more beautiful (if not the most beautiful) I have ever seen in a Ren’Py VN, the music is a delight for the ears and each of the stories made me want to know more about the characters it featured. While I own Studio Élan’s other works (though have yet to play them), it’s a damn shame The Waters Above didn’t get to see the light of day, as I would buy it in a heartbeat.

This month’s theme is right up my alley… oh yeah, see you next week! :)

almost 4 years ago* 0 comments